Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Jennifer Gray, Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at the College of Coastal Georgia.   Video Conference The student requested a video conference on Easter Sunday at 4pm. I said yes, because it was what he selected. I grumbled privately, as it was the only day without something work-related scheduled. I left celebrations at my neighbor’s house, much to our dismay, and logged in, expecting a blank black box. Instead, there he was, with a smile, a Zoom wave, and his Walmart uniform and nametag, calling from the front seat of his car on his break during his shift on a holiday. We talked about our assignment. He revised his citing practices, and I revised my negativities.     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Lisa Lebduska, Professor of English and Director of College Writing at Wheaton College.   Observations As a grad student adjuncting at 3 schools, I always ran late. One rainy day, I flew into my office, changed into dry shoes, then rushed to class. When class ended, a student was waiting for me. "We just wanted you to know," she said, "that we noticed you are wearing two different shoes." I looked with horror from the beige wedge on my left, to the black pump on my right. "Why didn't anyone say anything?" "We thought it was another one of those exercises where you were trying to see if we were paying attention to details… We were."   Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Sonia Feder-Lewis, a Professor at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Education.   Awakening It was a dream course assignment: a small upper-level honors class in Women’s Literature. A reward near the end of graduate school. Eleven students: 10 women and one brave young man, newly separated from the Army for carefully undisclosed reasons. The women treated him gently as we read Woolf, Morrison, Erdrich, Chopin. “The Awakening is the greatest book I have ever read,” he said passionately. Two decades later, he recognizes me in a coffee shop. Without pause, he tells me the course had been his favorite. And his hardest. I do not ask why.     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Pamela Childers, a lifelong secondary, undergraduate and graduate school educator, writer, editor, and consultant. She enjoys collaborating with colleagues and students.   Student Teaching “Go wash your mouth out with soap!” And he did. The 8th grader returned to our grammar lesson in progress, raised his hand, and bubbled out the next answer. In Biology class, I distributed apples and asked, “Who can identify the internal parts you just dissected?” And they all did, delighted to eat their half apples. Rushing to my senior English class to discuss the Romantic poets, I passed a student at his open locker pulling out a knife. “May I have that, please?” And he handed it to me. Things were much different in 1965, I have learned.    Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines.   ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Michelle Graber, Instructor of English and Communications at Mitchell Technical College.   Superheroes Students sit six feet apart – eyes beaming up at me expectantly, masks askew. I’ve never noticed so many of my students’ eyes: shades of blue, brown, green, and hazel. I wonder what the rest of their faces look like, this sea of superheroes tolerating the mandated masking of their identities for the sake of public approval. Wow. I’m teaching superheroes. I face the class during the pandemic peak and push them through their studies. One student raises his hand to ask a question, and I find myself contemplating Charlie Brown’s problems understanding his teacher. She must’ve been wearing a mask, too. “A little louder, please,” I say, trying to resist leaning forward to hear better as I meet the grass-green orbs of the student whose name I can’t associate with a face and whose words I cannot hear.    Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Stuart Barbier, a Professor of English at Delta College.   Pension “Your Internet connection is unstable,” warned my computer during yet another Zoom. That’s not the only thing that’s unstable, I thought, unable to separate non-work life (gardening and PBS period dramas) from work life (freshman composition and workplace drama). Face-to-face, I taught all students at the same time, answering questions within the class well enough that students rarely contacted me otherwise. Online? Endless emails, texts, phone calls, and videos, assignments trickling in like water torture, twenty-four/seven, as I turn my computer on when I get up and off when I go to bed. Retire, a friend suggested. Alas, too young.     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition    Overview “Protest music has always been an essential form of political expression in the US. And at times of political and social unrest, it becomes a crucial refuge — both for musicians, as a release valve for their frustrations and convictions, and for listeners in need of a rallying cry.” – Bridgett Henwood, “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar”   One of the courses I teach is an American Literature survey course that provides opportunities to explore a broad range of texts and genres. As we study these texts, I do my best to teach strong interpretive reading strategies and to incorporate multimodal texts and representative visual composition. I work to expand students’ definition of literature and encourage them to practice critical reading strategies to interpret cultural and historical texts and contexts along with traditional texts. This assignment does all of these things, and so I think it can work for a composition course as well as a literature course. Music and lyrics are a popular form of literature that students easily connect to through their lives. I have talked about the ways I have used music in my classes in previous posts (see Music and Class Playlists), but in this assignment, I ask students to look specifically at protest music as a genre. Although protest songs are in their repertoire, students are often unaware of their historical and cultural significance and the ways they have initiated social change. As referenced in the article “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar,” “Protest music has been around for centuries: As long as people have been getting fed up with the status quo, they’ve been singing about it. And because music styles, human emotions and social issues are so wide ranging, protest songs are too.” This assignment immerses students in the history and variety of protest music and asks them to interpret particular protest songs. They also work collaboratively with others to read across the examples and present them in a multimodal slide show.   Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook – Ch. 9, Reading Critically The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) – Ch. 7, Critical Reading EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) – Ch. 8, Reading and Listening Analytically, Critically, and Respectfully   Steps to the Assignment Historical Context and Genre Examples - Introduce students to the genre of the protest song. I take students through an exploration of protest music and have them read a couple of sources that show the span of the genre. I like the article “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar” by Bridgett Henwood, along with some aggregate resources such as Rolling Stone’s Top Protest Songs, Best Protest Songs in History, and a protest song playlist on Spotify. I also show them the brief video “The Evolution of American Protest Music” and guide them to the Spotify playlist (both linked in the Henwood article), which provide an overview with examples. Individual Protest Song Interpretation – Each student will focus on a protest song and search to find lyrics and a video link of an example of music as protest literature or social awareness. I ask them to think about issues and ideas that are important to them and focus on the ways the song creates awareness. They should choose something that has meaning for them—one that has specific cultural, social, or historical implications in which they might be interested. Students then write a short summary that provides artist information (name, year, title, etc.) and an analysis of how and what the song is protesting, including several significant passages from the song that speak to their claims. Have them include the link to the video, and look for them to forge a strong, substantiated interpretation. Like any literature with controversial content, I urge students to be sensitive in their choices and the ways they frame their discussions. Teachers can decide to let students include explicit lyrics or edited versions of the songs based on their own classroom contexts. Individual Slide – Each student then creates an accompanying Google Slide in which they include the song title and artist, a representative image, a meaningful passage from the song, a statement of protest, and a link to the song. Collaborative Slideshow – Students work in teams for this next part and add their individual slides to a Google team slideshow. They review and listen to their teammates’ songs. As a team, they shape the collaborative slideshow to include: An original, engaging title Team number and member names Team members’ individual slides A collaborative slide for takeaways—They should read across all the songs to look for patterns, connections, larger meanings, and meaningful ideas. References Presentation – Each team presents their slideshow to the class (both individual and collaborative takeaways and connections). This allows students to discuss the range of possibilities and artists and the ways these songs affect social change and awareness. It also introduces students to songs they might not have heard before to consider for future analysis (and listening pleasure). I encourage them to take notes along the way to select songs to which they might want to return. Students then post their team slideshows to a common space (Google Drive or a course LMS). Review and Listen – Students review and listen to at least 5 unfamiliar songs from other teams' protest music collections. They post a bulleted list of their choices along with a sentence or two comment about something they considered for each song. Playlist – As a fun addition to the assignment, teachers can compile a class playlist to share with students for their own music libraries. Check out the Protest Song Playlist from my Fall 2021 class.   Reflections on the Activity The assignment draws on many multimodal components: music, representative visuals, digital representation, and collaborative digital composing. Students enjoy this assignment because it helps them appreciate the ways their critical reading skills can be applied to cultural artifacts and to their lives. And . . . almost everyone loves music! Students focused on songs that protested issues such as: Unity, peace, and strength War involvement and political change Government corruption and abuse of power Civil and human rights Violence Media influence and distortion Gender identity and empowerment Many students said that they heard these songs before but did not stop to consider their meaning or the impact they might have on social awareness and change. I always find it interesting to hear new songs and themes they select and add to my own playlist as they share their work. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Heidi Rosenberg, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Business School.   Teaching in the Time of COVID Shana says she’s all right. How can I help? Each student is a square within a square I hold. She nearly pulled her finger off—it got caught so typing is one-fingered. She moved to her own place. She was pregnant, then not. The father of the never-born-baby smacks. I email, it’s her birthday—“happy birthday.” I am the only one who said that.  Her family—This is why I moved out. I say, You didn’t move far enough. She has a scholarship, job, apartment. We come to terms. One thing she asks: how do I stay when there’s nothing?     Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Patrick Morgan, Assistant Professor of English and Director of First-Year and Professional Writing at the University of Louisiana Monroe.   Tragedy to Hope It was my first semester teaching in the Deep South. Introducing a narrative unit to twenty-four freshman writers, I shared that apocryphal story about Ernest Hemingway betting a bunch of writers that he could compose a six-word short story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I asked them to unpack the story. Twenty-three students offered the usual tragedies: variations on infant mortality and infertility. One shy student said, “Maybe the author is a shoemaker.” And just like that, tragedy turned to hope. This was the story of an enterprising cobbler carving out the market for new shoes.       Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines. ... View more

Tiny Teaching Stories: Launch  Share Your Inspirational, Motivational or Funny Teaching Anecdotes With Us! Hello! I am excited to announce the launch of a new series on Bedford Bits: Tiny Teaching Stories, and to invite your participation.  What are Tiny Teaching Stories, you ask? See our introductory video or view our hub here:   To get us started, I'd like to share my own Tiny Teaching Story with you. We were small zoom squares, remote, distant, across 4 continents. In our online writing class, I talked about the need to create a classroom community; they filled the chatbox talk with fears about the pandemic, who had died, and who was in the hospital. Isabelle, in Vietnam, sprawled on her pink ruffled bedspread; Zara, in Pakistan, turned off her video to leave class for morning prayers. We understood that we would never see each other in person; we would always be at a distance, always in gallery view. And yet, when I missed class on the day my mother died, from across 4 continents they sent me poems of consolation and a bouquet of sunflowers.   Now, we want to hear from you. Send us your Tiny Teaching Story! Submit your Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com. Guidelines for submission: Stories should be no more than 100 words. Include with your submission the attached release form. Tiny Teaching Stories can be published anonymously or with attribution; please indicate your preference in your submission and include a brief one to two-sentence biography for non-anonymous publication. If you would like to, we encourage you to also submit your social media handles and a headshot (optional). Please change identifying names and details of students to protect their privacy.     ... View more

Recently, a younger colleague preparing to teach creative writing for the first time asked me what I’d learned over the past thirty-one years in the classroom. I said something vaguely coherent, but I think the question deserves a fuller answer, and I’d like to offer the following suggestions to my colleague, and to anyone else just starting out: Be kind. This is my “prime directive,” from the first day to the last. You cannot demonstrate too much compassion in a class in which students may be putting more of themselves on the line than they ever have in any other course. When in doubt, take a breath, then err on the side of generosity. Listen. Granted, the instructor probably knows more about creative writing than the student, but students have taught me a great deal in every class I’ve ever offered. And you will never learn what your students don’t know unless you stop talking yourself. Try to put yourself in the student’s place as they encounter materials and ways of writing that may be unfamiliar and feel forbidding: where are they getting lost, and why? Don’t assume everyone has had the same experiences—with literature, or life. While it’s essential that you try and imagine the world from your student’s perspective, know that you will never be able to completely accomplish that task. Race, gender, sexuality, mental and physical differences, economic and immigration status—our lives are varied, and there’s no sense in pretending that some haven’t had it easier than others. A teacher’s awareness of intersectionality must be honest and ongoing. Nurture the classroom community. A class in which everyone is respectful of one another and working together to value and strengthen everyone else’s writing—is there any happier place on earth? Creating such an environment takes work, of course, and every class meeting requires reinvestment on everyone’s part and constant vigilance on the teacher’s behalf. Among the articles I have found most illuminating about community in the creative writing classroom are “We Need New Metaphors: Reimagining Power in the Creative Writing Workshop” by Rachelle Cruz, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s New York Times piece about the potential hostility of writers’ workshops, and Sabina Murray and Ocean Vuong’s conversation about making the workshop more hospitable to writers of color. Learn from other writing teachers. If we have been lucky, our own writing teachers have gifted us with strategies to teach and inspire students. And of course, even unpleasant classroom experiences can motivate us—to do the opposite in our own classes. Fortunately, writers love to talk about writing, whether in person, online or in articles and books. Of the many resources available to teachers, I would especially recommend the remarkable page listing and linking to writers of color on craft compiled by the community at de-canon. Don’t be afraid to teach the fundamentals. In high school creative writing units, English teachers may way well cheer on every effort, happy simply to have their students engaged in the writing process. That’s certainly a worthy accomplishment, but in a college-level class, students also benefit from an introduction to the basics of each genre being taught. How, for instance, can a poet ever improve their poetry if they remain unaware of the magic of metaphor? Or how will a young playwright contribute to, or challenge, the traditions of drama if they are simply copying the conventions of late-night comedy skits? Insist that your students try to become better writers. If you are kind and listen to students, if you try and envision their experiences while also acknowledging the ultimate inadequacy of that effort, you may wonder if encouraging them to improve their work really matters. Isn’t it enough just to make sure they feel good about themselves when the semester is over? Honestly, I don’t think it is. Your efforts won’t be perfect: not everyone will write the way you want them to, and you may be culturally blind to some of the strengths your students possess. Nevertheless, a creative writing class in which the instructor does not push students to become the best writers they are capable of becoming at that particular moment in their lives is a missed opportunity for everyone.   Please look forward to the new edition (4e) of Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief coming out this upcoming summer of 2021! ... View more

Today's video concludes the "What We've Learned" video series, which brought to you Macmillan Composition, Literature, and Business and Technical Writing authors' reflections on teaching in the pandemic, teaching online, and how they've adapted their pedagogies. We hope you have found these videos useful, and if you missed any of them, just search for the tag "what we've learned." In today's video, Heather Sellers (@heather_sellers), author of The Practice of Creative Writing, discusses creating nonjudgmental workshops for students, as a way to transition from an evaluative mindset to a growth mindset. This takes a different kind of close reading, a lot of student thinking, and an understanding that a piece of writing can be missing specific elements without being "wrong."    ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Heather Sellers (@heather_sellers), author of The Practice of Creative Writing, discusses the unique structure of an online course, equating creating an intentional online course to structuring a short story or a poem.  ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Quentin Miller, author of The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature and Literature to Go, reflects on taking advantage of the opportunities presented by technology to broaden the types of assignment and engagement available to students.    ... View more

Today's "What We've Learned" video features Quentin Miller, author of The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature and Literature to Go, on being conscious of the type of requests instructors make of students in online learning, and the resilience shown both instructors and students.   ... View more